The Zeek Book List

These are some of the books Zeek’s editorial staff are reading these days. Click the link to support Zeek by purchasing the book on Amazon.

Stephen Hazan Arnoff

Torah in the Mouth Martin Jaffee Jaffee explains how the sages of late antiquity formed the lasting myth of the Oral Torah – and exposes the ancient memory and rhetorical techniques at the heart of rabbinic thought and imagination.

The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes Greil Marcus An amazing trip inside the guts of American popular music and a partial explanation for why Dylan matters so much.

Book of Longing Leonard Cohen This is the latest collection of poetry, drawings, and lyrics from modern day liturgist Leonard Cohen, who lays his spiritual, artistic search completely bare with mercy, humor, anger, sex, and grace.

Almanac of the Dead: A Novel Leslie Marmon Silko A tireless, inspiring epic of Native American tales dying and reborn in the contemporary Southwest.

A Fan’s Notes Fredrick Exley This chilling, wild story of a crazy, boozed-up iconoclast that would make anyone think twice about writing.

Joel Schalit

Israeli And Palestinian Narratives of Conflict: History’s Double Helix (Indiana Series in Middle East Studies) (Paperback) Robert I. Rotberg (Editor) Indian University Press, 2006.

Two steps forward, three steps back, or so seems the logic of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Assembling a stunning array of Israeli and Palestinian scholars to explore this problem, Robert Rotberg’s new anthology offers the most comprehensive set of explanations yet as to why Arabs and Israelis always appear to retreat to the all-too familiar dynamic of war.

When the Grey Beetles Took Over Baghdad Mona Yahya George Braziller, 2007 (forthcoming in April)

One of the consequences of the current war in Iraq has been the attention it has drawn to the country’s once-large Jewish community. From the recently published memoirs of Nissim Rejwan to this forthcoming novel by Mona Yahya, the plight of Iraqi Jewry has indeed never been in sharper focus. Equal parts coming of age novel and cultural history, for anyone seeking a sense of what’s been lost, Yahya’s debut is highly recommended.

Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy Stephen Duncombe New Press, 2007

One of progressive politics’ biggest turnoffs is its puritanical disdain of popular culture. Unable to appreciate how such things as ad campaigns and video games helps encourage people to mistake their desires for reality, Stephen Duncombe argues that the left needs to create its own counter-spectacle if its ever going to define a new political future. Brilliant.

Horizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentina Marina Sitrin AK Press, 2006

The first English-language translation of this remarkable oral history, Horizontalism chronicles the responses of Argentine labor activists to the country’s IMF-triggered 2001 meltdown. What emerges is the most highly engrossing literary portrait of contemporary struggles against globalization to emerge since journalists first began documenting the movement in the late 1990s. 100

David Stromberg

The Fall Albert Camus Concrete Thomas Bernhard Deception Philip Roth The Visible and the Invisible Maurice Merleau-Ponty Alarms and Diversions James Thurber

Ezra Sarajinsky

Eyes to See: Recovering Ethical Torah Principles Lost in the Holocaust Yom Tov Schwarz Urim Publications, 2004. Rabbi Yom Tov Schwartz, a Chareidi rabbi himself, examines contemporary trends in Ultra-Orthodox society from the context of his experience with life in pre-war Poland. What he finds is a religious community rife with factionalism, that is unable to produce a trusted Beit Din system, and where a high amount of fraud has been institiuionalized. Somehow, pre-War Jewry produced universally respected sages, who’s wisdom and grounding in a lived Judaism guided Jewsh communities effectivly away from the pitfalls currently mirring many today.

Duties of the Heart – Chovot HaLevavot Rabbi Bachya ben Yosef ibn Paquda Feldheim, 1996. Duties of the Heart was written in Judeo-Arabic in approximatelly 1040 under the title Kitab al-Hid_ya il_ Fara’id al-Qul_b. It reads as a manual for those seeking a deeper form of Jewish devotion, and has been consulted as such by Jewish seekers and mystics for centuries. Paquda was highly influenced by Sufism, and many have found parallels between this work and various Muslim texts and practises. Duties of the Heart contains its own recommended ritual of bowing on the floor before God in a candle lit room, and reciting poetry (either your own or Paquda’s) in a ritual of total submission before the Almighty.

Faith of the Mithnagdim – Rabbinic Responses to Hasidic Rapture Allan Nadler John Hopkins University Press, 1997. Academic and spiritual interest in Judaism often assumes Hasidism to be the most interesting, and spiritually focussed form of Ashkenazic Judaism. However, the forces that coalesced in the 18th century in opposition to Hasidism also had (and continue to have) their own compelling spiritual framework, as well as (somewhat) legitimate reasons for their opposition to Hasidism.

Shosha Isaac Bashevis Singer Pengion, 1978 Shosha tells the story of a young writer in pre-Holocaust Warsaw. This writer could very well be in part Singer himself, for the book and character bear much similarity with Singer’s autobiography Love and Exile. It portrays life in the ghetto of Warsaw in the 1930s, with the protagonist spending his time in thriving literary houses, his mind swarming with Torah, Communism, science, supersition, women, and of course the love of his life, Shosha. A beautiful portrait of a young artist in a backdrop that disapeared with the Holocaust.

Karaite Anthology: Excerpts from the Early Literature Leon Nemoy (ed.) Yale, 1952. This collection brings together Karaite texts from the 9th to the 16th centuries. The Karaites were a Jewish sect that emerged in the 9th century. They have been one of the most dynamic schematic movements to have divided Judaism. Still in existence today – primarily in the US and Israel – the Karaites greatly contributed to Jewish literature of the Middle Ages; they developed their own independent collection of theological dogmas, liturgy, juristic exegesis, metaphysical concepts, secular poetry, apologetics, and sermons. In fact for centuries, up until a century ago, the Karaites represented a major proportion of Jerusalem’s Jewish population. This book features new translations from the original Arabic, Hebrew and Aramaic, presenting a movement that has thrived as a minority’s minority.